Джеймс Джесус Энглтон: Американский разведчик и мастер контрразведки

Central Intelligence Agency officer (1917–1987)

James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was an American intelligence operative who served as chief of the counterintelligence department of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1954 to 1975. According to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, Angleton was "recognized as the dominant counterintelligence figure in the non communist world". Angleton served in the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime predecessor to the CIA, in Italy and London during World War II. After the war, he returned to Washington, D. C. to become one of the founding officers of the CIA. He was initially responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaison with counterpart organizations in allied countries. In 1954, Allen Dulles promoted Angleton to chief of the Counterintelligence Staff. As chief, Angleton was significantly involved in the defection of Soviet KGB agents Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Through Golitsyn, Angleton became convinced the CIA harbored a high ranking Soviet mole and engaged in an intensive search. Whether this was a highly destructive witch hunt or appropriate caution remains a subject of intense historical debate. Investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein agrees with the high regard in which Angleton was held by his colleagues in the intelligence business, and adds that Angleton earned the "trust of six CIA directors—including Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Allen W. Dulles and Richard Helms. They kept Angleton in key positions and valued his work."

James Jesus Angleton was born December 9, 1917, in Boise, Idaho, the eldest of four children of James Hugh Angleton (1888–1973) and Carmen Mercedes Moreno (1898–1985). His parents met in Nogales, Arizona, while his father was a U. S. Army cavalry officer serving under General John Pershing. Carmen Moreno was born in Mexico but was already a naturalized American citizen before she married James H. Angleton in December 1916. Angleton carried on an extensive correspondence with Pound, Cummings and T. S. Eliot, among others, and was particularly influenced by William Empson, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity. Angleton was trained in the New Criticism at Yale by Maynard Mack and others, chiefly Norman Holmes Pearson, a founder of American Studies. He briefly studied law at Harvard, but did not graduate.

In 1943, Angleton joined the U. S. Army. During World War II, Angleton served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and led its Italian branch. Angleton was interested in the defense of installations such as ports and bridges and offered Borghese a fair trial in return for his collaboration. He dressed him up in an American uniform and drove him from Milan to Rome for interrogation by the Allies. Borghese was then tried and convicted by an Italian court of collaboration with the Nazi invaders but not of war crimes. Angleton remained in Italy after the war, establishing connections with other intelligence services and playing a major role in the 1948 Italian general election. The election was won by the US backed Christian Democratic Party over the Soviet backed Italian Communist Party. In May 1949, he was made head of Staff A of the Office of Special Operations, where he was responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaising with counterpart intelligence organizations in foreign countries. Beginning in 1951, Angleton was responsible for "the Israel desk" as liaison with Israel's Mossad and Shin Bet agencies. Author Samuel Katz has claimed that Angleton directed CIA assistance to the Israeli nuclear weapons program. As head of Staff A, Angleton worked particularly closely with Kim Philby, the apparent future head of MI6, who was also in Washington. In 1951, Philby's colleagues Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to Moscow. Philby was expelled from Washington, suspected of having tipped them off based on decoded Soviet communications from the Venona project. Philby was confirmed to be a Soviet mole but eluded those sent to arrest him. He defected to Moscow in 1963. Philby called Angleton "a brilliant opponent" and a "fascinating" friend who seemed to be "catching on" before his defection. CIA employee William King Harvey, a former FBI agent, had voiced his suspicions regarding Philby and others Angleton suspected were Soviet agents. In 1953, Allen Dulles became Director of Central Intelligence. He soon named Angleton chief of the Counterintelligence Staff, in which position Angleton served for the remainder of his career. During the Vietnam War and Soviet American détente, Angleton remained convinced of the necessity of the war. During this period, Angleton's counter intelligence staff undertook a most comprehensive domestic covert surveillance project (called Operation CHAOS) under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson. The prevailing belief at the time was that the anti war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s had foreign funding and support. None was found by them, although the Soviet Union did influence the movements. Angleton also believed that the strategic calculations underlying the resumption of relations with China were flawed based on a deceptive KGB staging of the Sino Soviet split. He went so far as to speculate that Henry Kissinger might be under KGB influence.

Angleton held a general belief that all secret intelligence agencies should be assumed to be penetrated by others, or at least that a reasonable chief of counterintelligence should assume so. Angleton's view was influenced by his direct experience with the manipulation of German intelligence during World War II, the Cambridge Five, and the success of American infiltration efforts in the Third World. In particular, Angleton's close association with Philby heightened Angleton's suspicions and led him to double check "potential problems". Angleton's position in the CIA and his close relationship with Director Richard Helms in particular expanded his influence, and as it grew, the CIA split between Angletonians and anti Angletonians. This conflict rose in particular regard to Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko, who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1961 and 1964, respectively. Golitsyn defected via Helsinki on December 15, 1961. He and his family flew with a CIA escort to Sweden and then to the United States, where he was interviewed by Angleton personally. Golitsyn limited his initial debriefing to a review of photographs to identify KGB officers and refused to discuss KGB strategy. After Golitsyn raised the possibility of serious infiltration with MI5 in a subsequent debriefing, MI5 shared the concern with Angleton. He responded by asking Helms to allow him to take responsibility for Golitsyn and his further debriefing. Golitsyn ultimately informed on many famous Soviet agents, including the Cambridge Five, which led to their apprehension. However, other allegations Golitsyn made, including that Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent and that the Sino Soviet split was a "charade," were ultimately found to be false. Angleton believed this claim, with the result that anyone who approximated this description fell under his suspicion. Angleton became increasingly convinced that the CIA was compromised by the KGB. Golitsyn convinced Angleton that the KGB had reorganized in 1958 and 1959 to consist mostly of a shell, incorporating only those agents whom the CIA and the FBI were recruiting, directed by a small cabal of puppet masters who doubled those agents to manipulate their Western counterparts. Although Golitsyn was a questionable source, Angleton accepted significant information obtained from his debriefing by the CIA. Nosenko was allowed to defect, although the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable lie detector tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments. Judging his claim (as well as additional claims regarding Lee Harvey Oswald) improbable, Angleton permitted David Murphy, head of the Soviet Russia Division, to hold Nosenko in solitary confinement for over three years. This confinement included 16 months in a small attic with no windows, furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. Nosenko was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. Nosenko spent an additional four months in a ten foot by ten foot concrete bunker in Camp Peary. Nosenko did not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover thought otherwise. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to severely curtail counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as FBI director. Nosenko was found to be a legitimate defector, a lieutenant colonel. He became a consultant to the CIA.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau were agents of the Soviet Union. Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of being assets for the Soviet Union.

In 1973, William Colby was named Director of Central Intelligence by Richard Nixon. Colby reorganized the CIA in an effort to curb Angleton's influence and weaken the Counterintelligence branch, beginning by stripping him of control over the Israel desk. Colby demanded Angleton's resignation. Angleton came to public attention when the Church Committee (formally the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) probed the CIA for information on domestic surveillance, specifically the operation known as HT Lingual, as well as assassination plots and the death of John F. Kennedy. In December 1974, Seymour Hersh published a story in The New York Times about domestic counter intelligence activities against anti war protesters and other domestic dissidents. Angleton's resignation was announced on Christmas Eve 1974, just as President Gerald Ford demanded Director Colby report on the allegations and various Congressional committees announced that they would launch their own inquiries. Angleton told reporters from United Press International that he was resigning because "my usefulness has ended" and the CIA was getting involved in "police state activities". Three of Angleton's senior aides retired within a week after it was made clear that they would be transferred elsewhere in the Agency rather than promoted. The Counterintelligence staff was reduced from 300 to 80 people. In 1975, Angleton was awarded the CIA's Distinguished Intelligence Medal. By this time, Angleton had been quietly rehired by the CIA at his old salary through a secret contract. Until September 1975, "operational issues remained solely the preserve of Angleton".

The late 1970s were generally a period of upheaval for the CIA. During George H. W. Bush's tenure as Director, President Ford authorized the creation of Team B, a project concluding that the Agency and the intelligence community had seriously underestimated Soviet strategic nuclear strength in Central Europe. Admiral Stansfield Turner, on his appointment as DCI by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, used Angleton as an example of the excesses in the Agency that he hoped to curb. He referred to this during his service and in his memoirs. Because of their suspicions, Angleton and his staff ultimately impeded the career advancement of numerous CIA employees. Forty employees are said to have been investigated and fourteen were considered serious suspects by Angleton's staff. The CIA paid compensation to three under what Agency employees termed the "Mole Relief Act". With Golitsyn, Angleton continued to seek out moles. They sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself a former CIA asset) to write New Lies for Old, which argued that the Soviet Union planned to fake a collapse to lull its enemies into a false sense of victory, but Buckley refused. In his 1994 book Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA, author Mark Riebling claimed that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, nine seemed "clearly wrong", and the other 46 were "not soon falsifiable".

A set of highly sensitive Agency documents, referred to as the "Family Jewels," was publicly released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy. The release was prompted by an internal CIA investigation of the 1970s Church Committee which verified the far ranging power and influence that Angleton wielded during his long tenure as counter intelligence czar. The exposé revealed that Angleton planned infiltration of law enforcement and military organizations in other countries was used to increase the influence of the United States. It also confirmed past rumors that it was Angleton who was in charge of the domestic spying activities of the CIA under Operation CHAOS.

The 2006 film The Good Shepherd is loosely based on Angleton's life and his role in the formation of the CIA. The Laundry Files by Charles Stross features a senior Laundry agent whose nom de guerre is James Angleton. The 2002 novel The Company by Robert Littell—and the 2007 television mini series The Company based on it, with Angleton portrayed by Michael Keaton—is focused on Angleton's efforts to find a Soviet mole. Angleton was portrayed by John Light in the 2003 BBC TV mini series Cambridge Spies. The song "Angleton" by Russian indie rock band Biting Elbows is about Angleton's life and career. In the television series Granite Flats the actor Cary Elwes plays Hugh Ashmead, the name "Ashmead" being the cover name for Angleton. William F. Buckley's 2000 novel Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton is a fictionalized treatment of Angleton's career, a storyline being placed upon, between and within actual historic facts and events. Mike Doughty released a song entitled "James Jesus Angleton" on Apple Music in December 2017. The Fatima Mansions track "Brunceling's song" mentions Angleton by name, in a narrative involving spies adapting to regular life. In the 1991 Norman Mailer novel Harlot's Ghost, Tremont Montague (Harlot) is based on Angleton. The fourth season of the television series Le Bureau des Légendes introduces a character from the French external security service (DGSE) with the nickname of "JJA" James Jesus Angleton. There is a short discussion of Angleton's career and its connection to this character. Angleton was portrayed by Stephen Kunken in the 2022 ITVX mini series A Spy Among Friends about the defection of Kim Philby. In 2016, he was portrayed by Anthony Brophy in The Crown. In the HBO Max miniseries White House Plumbers, Angleton is portrayed by David Pasquesi.